The Aphra Behn Society for Women in the Arts, 1660-1830 is pleased to announce its 2013 biennial conference:

Women, Reputation, and Identity in the Long Eighteenth Century October 24-25, 2013

The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK

The Aphra Behn Society for Women in the Arts, 1660-1830 is pleased to announce a plenary lecture by Dr. Laura Engel (Duquesne University) and a reading by Maureen Duffy, author of The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn 1640-89.

In Fashioning Celebrity: 18th-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making (Ohio State University Press, 2011), Laura Engel writes, "In the eighteenth century, as in contemporary culture, the idea of celebrity was tied to narrative possibilities. In other words, celebrity, and particularly female celebrity, materialized through projections of idealized representations of femininity specific to particular historical moments" (2).

The long eighteenth century witnessed the rise of the professional, public Englishwoman—for example, as actress, novelist, and playwright—and brought about new ways of manipulating and negotiating the boundaries of celebrity, identity, and reputation. Aphra Behn herself was one of the first female authors to grapple with the demands of fame and femininity as a commercial author writing for the public stage.

The Aphra Behn Society for Women in the Arts, 1660-1830 thus invites papers exploring any aspect of fame, celebrity culture, and the construction of self in the long eighteenth century. We particularly welcome papers that address the following topics:

-representations of female identity in literature or the sister arts, by men or by women, including the ability of authors and artists to construct, deconstruct, or interrogate identity -the construction of the autobiographical self, including negotiations with memory, celebrity, and reputation -competitions for representation and the battle to define one's own reputation, both before and after death -female self-marketing techniques, in the playhouse, in the literary marketplace, and beyond -the construction of all-female or female-inclusive networks -acting and performance techniques and the development of celebrity reputation -women's roles in the playhouse, Grub Street, and the broader, commercial world -notoriety and political culture, including scandal narratives, pamphlet tracts, and clandestine satires -new trends in eighteenth-century studies, including the recovery of women's texts, developments in anthologizing practices, and the growth of digital humanities -issues in teaching women of the long eighteenth century, such as reckoning with changes to the canon and to available materials, the role of new technologies in pedagogy, or the relationship between text, ideology, and the classroom

We also welcome abstracts for papers not related to the conference theme.

Send 1-2 page abstracts to aphrabehn2013@gmail.com by May 15, 2013. Please specify in your abstract if you will require audio/visual equipment.

Sponsored by the Aphra Behn Society for Women in the Arts, 1660-1830 and the University of Tulsa NEH-Endowed Comparative Literature Symposium, the conference will include a plenary banquet, an evening of Restoration theatre performed by the University of Tulsa's Department of Theatre, and many exciting papers delivered by scholars from around the country. For more information, please contact the conference organizer, Dr. Jennifer L. Airey, at jennifer-airey@utulsa.edu.